I started out as a huge Bloglines fan.  I use it throughout the day to get the latest articles and posts from all of the sites that I like…roughly 300 as of today.  I used to think it was a really helpful aggregator that saved me time and kept me up to date with the latest info.  When I load it up it shows me all of the sites I’ve saved and highlights those with new content, showing me how many new articles or posts there are to view on the site.

But, lately it is starting to piss me off.

More and more I’ll click to view new posts and all I see is the same old shit I’ve already read and seen at least once if not twice.  I don’t know if the feed owner is specifying that the post has been updated or if its a Bloglines bug, but it wastes my time as I have to sift through old posts to get to the good stuff.  Look, if I’ve already clicked on a highlighted site and viewed the NEW articles they should not be highlighted again, or at least not in the same way.  This appears to be a relatively new issue…or maybe it’s just happening more frequently now.

Anyone else having this problem?  Know of a solution?  Is it time for me to switch aggregators?

Was just making the casual rounds to Digg.com and noticed that the site is down.  It’s 12:01 AM PST…..

Anyone else seeing this?

Wonder what’s up…..

According to Mashable iLike has become among the fastest growing music services, with over six million registered users, gaining a whopping three million just since the launch of its Facebook app only two weeks ago.

iLike has gotten a reported three million users since its launch last October, and its growth is exponential, now that it’s on Facebook. The music website is gaining nearly a million new users every month, and is looking to become the most used music application on Facebook. iLike’s Facebook app lets you personalize incoming information based on your Facebook music and that of your friends, and get alerts for when your favorite artists will be in town.

Are you building a Facebook widget?  Have one live already?

Why try to build your own community when you can utilize one of the largest ones out there for free?

There’s a new meta search engine on the block: Sputtr.   It doesn’t really matter as everyone uses Google, but my initial reaction to it was positive.  I like the design and layout of the website…it has a “web 2.0″ feel to it.  Big font. Bright colors.  Etc.

It’s a fairly user friendly interfact that allows you to easily search all of the major search engines and social media websites within a few clicks.  Just enter your query and then click on the icon of your choice to view the results at that engine or website.   There are plenty of options listed on the site but Sputtr also gives you the option of suggesting a new search site if you feel there is a good one missing.

From their about page:

Welcome to Sputtr. A refreshingly clean way to search the things that matter the most.
Now you can save valuable time by having all the right searches on just one page!

It’s simple - reeeaal simple.
It’s fast - faster than most others out there.
It’s a collection of all your favorite search engines - all on just one page!
It’s pretty - at least we think so.

Jason Calcanais launched a new human edited search engine called Mahalo.com.

There is a lot of coverage out there, including Andy, Tech Crunch, ZDNet, Threadwatch, Mashable, and Search Engine Land to name a few.

But I think Brian at Scoreboard Media said it best.  Check out his review here…it’s classic.

According to Techcrunch.com and Search Engine Land, Google is acquiring Feedburner for a juicy $100 million.  Pretty funny…we were just recently discussing this within the office as a possibility.  We all agreed it was a logical next step for Google to get its hands into the growing RSS market.  It also lets Google get a head start in the RSS feed advertising market which Feedburner is pushing.

According to Techcrunch:

Feedburner is in the closing stages of being acquired by Google for around $100 million. The deal is all cash and mostly upfront, according to our source, although the founders will be locked in for a couple of years.

Congrats to the Feedburner team.  The people I’ve met there are good guys and I wish them the best in the acquisition.

Facebook.com is set to make a big announcement this Thursday, May 24th.   The Wall Street Journal and Cnet speculate that this announcement will bring another level of social media to the networking giant.

“On Thursday, the Palo Alto, Calif., company will announce a new strategy to let other companies provide their services on special pages within its popular Web site. These companies will be able to link into Facebook users’ networks of online friends, according to people familiar with the matter.”

One quote in particular gives me the feeling that Facebook would like to become more of a content aggregator and/or publisher instead of a social networking website:

“Mr. Zuckerberg in the past has acknowledged he has greater ambitions for Facebook. He has bristled at Facebook’s “social networking” tag, instead calling the site a “social utility” that helps people share information, with their personal connections with each other as a backdrop. If others build services to take advantage of those connections, Facebook can become more useful for its users, he said in the March interview.”

Sound familar to Myspace News?  Hopefully not….as far as I know, Myspace News hasn’t really taken off since its launch.

Steve O’Hear at ZDNet.com and Paidcontent.org discuss how Facebook.com will become a platform on which companies can provide services within the Facebook pages.   Using this platform a company, or entertainer, or individual may be able to leverage their network to share content, or a product, or an offer, etc.  Of course this is all speculation at this point.

One of these options does seem like a reasonable next step for Facebook.com.  They are growing at an incredible rate, but if you don’t continue to improve your site and evolve you’ll eventually fade away.

On a seperate but related issue, what do you think of them rejecting acquisition offers and opting to stay private?  Do you think they have what it takes to go the distance?  They just seem so ripe for a buyout by a huge media company or Google.

We built a widget in-house and released it to our consumers earlier this year.  This was our first widget so we pushed it as much as possible with a small level of apprehension due it being our first voyage in the world of widgets.

Since we developed the widget in-house we were able to add a static backlink at the bottom of the widget that would help our SEO efforts.  Users and webmasters are able to edit the code and remove the link if they choose to, but it appears as though most are leaving the link with the widget.  Each page online that shows the widget will also display a backlink to our site.

Today I checked the big three, Google / Yahoo / MSN, to see how many pages displaying our widget are indexed.

• Google = 4 pages indexed
• Yahoo = 20,600 pages indexed
• MSN = 2,047 pages indexed

What the hell is going on with Google?  A knee jerk reaction from some would be to ask if the widget was placed on low PR, low authority (in other words crap) pages, but that isn’t the case.  Due to the helpful nature of the widgets they’re being picked up and display on sites like MSNBC.com and a lot of local news station websites from around the country.

I got the numbers above by checking the string “powered by domain.com” in each, with quotes.  What’s interesting is that if I search for “powered by” domain.com, with the domain portion outside of the quotes, there are thousands of additional sites displaying the widget that show up in Google.  If Google has the pages indexed why wouldn’t it return them for the direct query?

Sexywidget.com has an absolutely excellent post “Anatomy of a Widget” from today regarding their recently released widget. They take us through each part of the widget, how it functions, what purpose it serves, and how it benefits the user and the company.

In part of the post he states:

“I think an important first step for anybody working on their widget strategy is to try and get their brain around the value exchange that will take place when a blogger or profile owner places your widget on their site. What problem is your widget solving, and what do you expect to get back for solving this problem? Is it a fair exchange?”

We’ve been working through these excercises as we are developing and releasing our widgets. I think we’ll end up releasing the widgets in phases, and my feeling is that the Phase II widgets will differ greatly from the Phase I widgets. I think they will require more personalization, customization, and features to satisfy some of these questions and requirements.

Pop over to Sexywidget.com and read the post..it is well worth the time.

Valleywag has a really interesting post documenting the ages of some of the web’s most successful businesses and their founders.

Of the 18 founders listed in the comparison, only 4 of them were 30 years old or above when they started their company.

Is it shocking? No.  But I also wasn’t aware that some of these guys like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were barely past their 20th birthday when they founded Microsoft and Apple.

So, are the young guys coming up with all of the good ideas online?   Is it still true in the web 2.0 world?

PS: Another interesting thing to note?  They’re all men. 

I look forward to seeing Valleywag.com’s next round of data: “Our next project: to track the distribution of outcomes for entrepreneurs in a particular age cohort. “